What Housework?

Bzzzzzzz...

 

Hear that buzzing sound? My husband and I heard it all day yesterday and finally figured it out when we sat down on the porch for a beer before dinner.

Bees. There's one in the photo up there.

Big bumblebees, feasting on the nectar of black-locust blossoms.

Our yard is full of these trees, which it turns out are actually a nuisance species. But the short-lived blossoms make the whole yard smell delightful and attract orioles and, apparently, hordes of big, bumbling, buzzing, bumblebees. (Then 200 million petals drift down from the trees and settle several inches thick on your porch furniture. Day after day.)

Other things make a buzzing sound, too.

 

I had a few interruptions that didn't allow me to get the hummingbird photos until the good light had faded, but I did get this one perching for a moment on our clothesline:

We're all about the birds. This week, we have some sad bird news. First of all, Daisy is no longer with us. My light Brahma hen, she would have turned five years old this month. It's a little graphic to go into on the blog, but let's just say the three tom turkeys are murderers. Deviants, too.

On another sad note, we are down to just two turkey poults!

Trixie has finally started roosting in the turkey house again, instead of sleeping in the middle of the field. But poult #3 apparently fell off the roost and into the goats' sleeping quarters and got rolled on during the night.

Meanwhile, gray turkey Rose has disappeared, likely on a nest but possibly fox food. And the peahen is gone, too. We knew she was nesting in the woods, but she hasn't been home for her every-other-day afternoon snack in a few days. She might have hatched her babies and is busy helping them find food closer to the nest. Or she may have been eaten. I'll keep you posted.

We've been super busy in the garden. So far there's not much to show for our efforts, except the peas. I think pea vines are lovely.

  

These two are holding hands:

Cliche tractor photo:

The piglets are growing fast. I couldn't get good photos because of two electric fences between me and them but you get the idea.

Polly:

Chip, with something to say:

      

Now, this is supposed to be a knitting blog. Confession: I am still struggling with my handspun April socks, which are taking FOREVER. No pictures. Besides, I have plenty of other yarn and fiber stealing my attention, although nothing new on the wheel or the needles. I WILL finish those damn socks before our annual camping trip at the end of the month.

I forgot to mention in my last post a gift I received from Rainbow Yarns Northwest: Two bumps of incredibly decadent and luxurious spinning fiber. The first is called First Love and is a blend of 75 percent Pygora and 25 percent silk.

The second is an undyed blend of 75 percent Pygora and 25 percent superfine Merino:

Pictures don't do this fiber justice. I have no idea what I will do with these, other than bury my face in them now and then. But when I find the right project, these will be fabulous.

Meanwhile, at A Piece of Vermont Yarn & Fiber, I have nothing  really new, but things will be coming soon. I just sent a small wholesale yarn order off to Kaleidoscope Yarns here in Vermont. And on Wednesday, my partner in crime Jenn and I made a return road trip to Green Mountain Spinnery to pick up my newest Real Vermonter yarn order. Ta-da!

  

I am in LOVE with this yarn! The folks at the Spinnery outdid themselves, as did the Vermont sheep and alpacas who contributed their fiber. It's a 2-ply sport weight and I have 37 pounds of it. As soon as I finalize the name, the price, and all that jazz, it will be available for sale. I have just dyed up the first few skeins and while they do look fantastic, I'm pretty partial to the undyed color, which has a touch of fawn-colored alpaca that gives it a golden tinge. It smells like real sheep, and while that may not appeal to everyone, to me it underscores the fact that this is 100 percent Vermont yarn. I've met the animals that produced the fiber and the people who spun it. And it's "Greenspun," the Spinnery's term for their special milling process that uses petroleum-free spinning oils. Heaven, I tell you. 

I know it's bad PR for my commercial yarns and fibers when I gush so about Vermont fiber and small-mill fibers and yarns with provenance and all that. But I can't help myself. This yarn is so yarn-y and unique and sheepy and textural and anything but mass-produced, I just have to sing it out. I'll have some ready for you (dyed and undyed) by next week. I wish you could smell this stuff. I've been huffing it all morning. I hope that's legal.

And, to wrap up this very long post, two more quick things.

1. Thank you for all your yarn name suggestions. I am still working on final names and I'll let you know when all is said and done. I am still taking entries, if you have more.

2. I'm about to expand beyond yarn and fiber. I have recently purchased a batch of hand-printed wood-block notecards by a local artist, which will be on sale next week. Here's a sneak preview of one of her 8 designs:

Love them.

Attrition

Well, didn't the overconfident little farmer wannabes take a fall this week! We had a turkey tragedy.

Last week, Trixie hatched out 5 poults and we gave her the 6 we had hatched in the incubator. She was frantic to get them outside and we stupidly let her. One disappeared. And then there were 10.

She was doing fine with them, but kept sleeping out in the woods rather than near the house (probably to avoid Milo!). But my husband and brother-in-law dug a couple dozen post holes for the new, improved goat yard they are building. Sunday morning, we found that 3 of them had fallen into the holes and, unable to get out, had died. And then there were 7.

Meanwhile, the survivors were standing around in the cold, wet grass while their mother tried to rescue the victims in the holes. One died. And then there were 6.

The boys brought the survivors into the house and we put them under a heat lamp while we set up proper housing for Trixie and the poults. One of them just couldn't warm up. And then there were 5.

We made Trixie a nice setup right in the turkey barn, with a board across the door to keep the poults from getting outside but allowing the other birds to come and go. We brought the babies back to their distraught mother and she stepped on one's head.

And now there are 4.

Well camouflaged, aren't they?

Everyone left seems to be doing fine at this point. We are sadder but wiser now and, as with so much around here, have learned from the experience. I feel responsible for the loss of most of the other poults, but such is life on the homestead. You can't dwell on it.

Spring is full of contrasts, especially that of birth and death. Although this week is cold and windy, the weekend was a lot nicer than the forecast predicted. Here's Dave under the cherry tree:

Tulips and grape hyacinths:

My younger stepson home for the summer (do all guys just love tractors?):

The new, fortified goat fence in progress (the permanent part, which will now be electrified so we won't have quite so many daring escapes):

I have been busy in the shop. I shipped off my order to yarn4socks.com and have been concentrating on fiber. Some of you asked about my new Pat Green Triple Picker and what it does. Oh, I'll tell you. Here we have a couple of pounds of scoured Romney fleece from a local farm:

There's some VM, and while it looks quite fluffy, those locks are a bit too intact to put through the drum carder. You put on your leather gloves, feed the locks into the Triple Picker, and within a few minutes you have this:

A lot of the VM has fallen out, and the volume of the fleece has more than quadrupled. It's like a cloud of Romney! Now we can card.

Someone mentioned that they'd like some local fiber pulled into roving instead of sold as batts. I thought that would be fun because it opens up the option of space dyeing and keeping the colors separate. The good news is I tried it. From batts to roving:

It's lovely. The bad news is I discovered that pulling batts into roving takes approximately FOREVER. I will dye this stuff up but the price is going to reflect the labor involved in handling a raw fleece at every stage, from scouring to drying to picking to carding, to re-carding, to pulling into roving, to dyeing, to rinsing, to drying, to packaging, photographing, and uploading. On the bright side, there are not very many sources for non-mill-processed fiber from known sources.

Speaking of mill-processed fiber from an unknown source (weren't we?), I have updated A Piece of Vermont Yarn and Fiber with bamboo/merino top. Before I shop you the new stuff, look what I did with mine. I had meant to spin enough for a Clapotis, but after one skein I realized the colorway was a bit too My Little Pony for me. My daughter loved it. So, here's how it went:

Finished in two days, it's the Shrug This from One Skein Wonders. Like others on Ravelry, I question how this could ever have been intended for an adult. My gauge is smaller than what is called for, but even so... Anyway, it was a quick knit and my daughter (don't you love the summer bob, even uncombed?) modeled it and then wore it to school today. Now she wants a poncho from the same merino/bamboo.

And so we come to the shop update. I posted the following 60/40 merino/bamboo bumps to A Piece of Vermont Yarn and Fiber today:

Spring Fling, Mist, Three-Day Weekend, Mossy Stones, and Farmer's Market:

ETA: FARMER'S MARKET IS SOLD. YOWZA THAT WAS FAST.

Farmer's Market (the last one, above) comes with a special quantity discount. There are four bumps of that colorway totalling over 16 ounces, and if you buy all four at once, each one is $1.50 off, plus you get automatic free shipping for orders $60 or over. I know how tough it is to buy bigger amounts of fiber or yarn without breaking the bank, but this stuff would make a fantastic summer sweater or shawl. Of course, the discount will only work as long as all four bumps are still available.

And I just have to share the surprise that came in the mail for me yesterday:

That's real Oklahoma alpaca blended with silk. Gorgeous and buttery and I can't wait to do something with it. It was part of a thank-you gift from Susan, a.k.a. Red Dirt Knitter, to whom I recently introduced the magic that is real maple syrup. (I think she likes it.) Thank you, Susan!!!!

So, I have a little time before my daughter gets home to go for a run. I'm up to four (slow) miles a couple of times a week and I can still walk and take the stairs, which is nice. Standing up after long periods of sitting requires a bit more time than it otherwise would, but I can do it without yelling almost every time.

We're throwing a big Memorial Day barbecue/potluck on Sunday night. If I don't get another post in by the weekend, have a good one.

Pigs, poults, and a yarn sale

Yes, more animal pictures. It's all I've got these days.

More spring excitement on the homefront. The piglets finally got to hang out with their dad:

who seemed quite comfortable with them:

In fact, he slept through most of the fun.

I wonder what this piglet's so happy about:

Here, two of them sample the trough:

This one likes rubber shoes:

This same afternoon, my husband and brother-in-law made a temporary fenced-in area for them all to go outside. One piglet contemplates the great world beyond the barn:

So tempted...

Mom?

Eventually, Sassy did take them all out to the wallow:

A mother who's been cooped up with six little ones for several weeks might understandably want a "Calgon-take-me-away" bath:

But any mom will tell you that once you have kids, privacy and quiet, reflective moments come rarely and briefly.

On the same day, we managed to get an asparagus bed and three blueberry bushes planted. And the peas are up... We also got our fire pit set up and had a cookout and an evening around the campfire after dinner. Life still doesn't suck around here.

Meanwhile, inside the house, a slightly unexpected thing happened. Saturday night, some of the turkey eggs we had been incubating started to peep. We really didn't think they'd hatch. By Sunday morning, there was one poult staggering around among the 7 remaining eggs. It wasn't easy to get pictures through the window, but I tried. Here's another egg about to hatch:

Minutes later, a very tired poult emerged:

Two poults:

Over the course of the day, all but 2 of the eggs hatched. The last (sixth) one to show signs of life struggled all day long to break through the shell. Although it had gaps all the way around the egg, the inner membrane started to dry and no matter how hard the poult wobbled and pushed, it couldn't break through.

Moral dilemma.

Some people say you should never help a bird hatch. If it can't do it on its own, it isn't meant to live. Others warn that if you do help, you risk hurting the chick or causing it to hemorrhage. Others say you should do what you can. My husband decided to snip some of the dried membrane and see what happened.

Within minutes, a very loud and lively poult popped out!

Here they are in the brooder box Sunday night:

If you recall, we incubated four eggs from each of our two hens. Three of each hatched out. Rose, like last year, did not sit on her nest so we knew she'd never hatch her own. Trixie, being less than a year old, was an unknown quantity. But she did set, and her poults hatched over the weekend. My husband caught sight of a couple of them peeking out from under her.

As of this morning, Trixie was still nesting up on a pile of lumber. We had to move her and the poults down to a safer, lower nest before they started wandering around and fallilng. We expected a beak thrashing from Trixie. Instead, when my husband reached under her, she stood aside. We found five happy little poults and several unhatched eggs. We moved them all down to a hay-lined dog crate on the floor and in minutes Trixie joined them, rearranged her eggs and settled in.

Since she only had five poults (the other eggs are not likely to hatch after all this time), we decided to give her the six poults we had in the house. This was a tough decision as, unlike baby chickens, the poults are much mellower and more curious and seem to like to be held. My daughter, rarely moved by small animals, has been cuddling them for two days.

We set them out in front of Trixie. It took about five minutes (I think the poults felt we were putting them up for adoption, because they kept turning to us and trying to get out of the crate!) but one by one they slipped under her. So now she's got her three indoor babies back, plus three of Rose's, plus her five, so 11 in all.  We will miss them, but it's easier for us and better for them this way.

My daughter came home from school, learned what we had done, burst into tears, and is no longer speaking to us. Still, Trixie will make a better mother than we will.

In celebration of all the new babies around here (and because I'm too busy to dye up more yarn this week), I've got a two-day sale going on at A Piece of Vermont Yarn and Fiber (like the new name?). Both the Panda Superwash and Colonial Superwash sock yarns are 10 percent off now through Thursday! Enter the coupon code SPRING at checkout to receive your discount. The sale has already been advertised to people on the mailing list so inventory is down a little bit. But there's still plenty there.

Spinners: I have bamboo/merino top cooling right now, and a freshly scoured pile of fluffy white Romney waiting for something, I don't know what yet.

I actually took a few minutes to spin today because I have desperately wanted to make a Clapotis out of handspun bamboo/merino. Knowing I wouldn't have the time to spin, I eventually decided I'd just dye up some yarn and knit it from that. But I didn't have any suitable yarn on hand. So yesterday, I confess, I went to the LYS and almost bought yarn for this project. At the last minute, I stopped myself, curbed my impulses, and remembered the original goal: Use my own handspun.

I will have a handspun Clapotis. Someday.

Remember, the coupon code at checkout is SPRING!!!!

Hog heaven

Fudd got a new wallow this week.

Ahhhh.

He's not the only one in hog heaven lately. My husband bought ANOTHER tractor this week, this time a 1952 Ferguson, and a set of harrows for getting the cornfield ready for planting.

Of course, what antique tractor purchase is complete without an antique two-row corn planter to go with it?

Not to say that my husband is getting carried away with this whole homesteading thing, but this might be an indication: Here's the garden space he tilled for me. Do you think it will be big enough?

(Confession: The nearby farmstand planted it last year, so the ground had already been used for veggies. He kept it the same size, just in case....)

Anyway, it's spring. And it's crazy.

We have been extremely busy around here, more so than usual. Tuesday, I wrote a column about the goats (which you may be able to read online shortly). And today I will be sending a big batch of yarn to yarn4socks.com for their sock club.  Because of that, there is no shop update this week.

Nor is there any appreciable knitting to show. Now that we can actually get outside and it's light from 5:30 in the morning to 8:30 at night, why stay inside?

My husband and brother-in-law have been working until dark to get everything ready for summer around here.  Here's my brother-in-law, whom I may start calling "Lurvy," building the Stairway to Heaven.

But where does it lead?

Up over the pigpen...

To the new chicks' penthouse. I swear this would make a great studio apartment. It has a great view of the fields and just needs a little sheetrock to be nice and cozy.

Introducing 41 balls of fluff:

Don't get too sentimental. In a couple of months, these birds will be going into our freezer (and my brother-in-law's). But for now they're living in high style and not getting treated like factory birds.

In fact, we're trying to slow down the frightening growth rate that meat chickens have been selectively bred for. Rather than being crammed into tight quarters, kept under lights 24-7 (so they can eat more often) and being essentially force-fed nothing but grain, these birds will have space, fresh air, sunshine, an outdoor run, and a wider variety of food. They are still freakishly mutated animals, just like the ones we eat from the supermarket, but they will at least get treated well. This is our first foray into meat birds. I'll keep you posted on how it goes.

We are getting ready to put Fudd back with Sassy and the babies. The boys took out a door and put in a fence so the pigs could at least see each other. Fudd and Sassy were practically overjoyed. And the babies and Fudd seemed quite taken with each other. You should have heard all the happy grunting and seen all the curly-tail wagging. As soon as a piglet-proof fence gets built, they can all be together, outside and in.

Fudd and Sassy, together again:

Fudd and a piglet:

At one point yesterday, I found Fudd with his snout through the bars and one of the piglets rooting around INSIDE HIS MOUTH. For now, Fudd is a bit forlorn. (Yes, I know it's dangerous to attribute human emotions to animals, especially those whose offspring we will someday serve for dinner, but if anything I'm learning that it's not a bad thing to have empathy for your food.)

The piggies are growing fast. Sassy's a good mama:

Here, five piglets are getting dinner:

Number 6 is busy with other things:

But eventually she crashes the party:

The 3 other pigs have been working hard. Check out this fond embrace:

But wait, there's more. Can you spot the turkey in this picture?

Yes, up there, above all the junk, there's Trixie:

She's been sitting on a nest (my husband brought in the hay for her) for weeks. Babies are due next week! We also have 8 eggs (4 of hers, 4 of Bad Mother Rose's) in an incubator. They're due to hatch Monday, although we're not sure if they will.

Dave is big into courtship these days. He likes to show off for the peahen under the apple trees.

As usual, he moons the camera:

All of this displaying is accompanied by vibrating feathers and vigorous foot stamping. Below, he pretends to be a satellite dish. Radar Love, indeed.

Finally, I got the full frontal view.

We're kind of hoping the hen isn't impressed. Dave already spends much of the day standing in the middle of the road stopping traffic (a springtime ritual, we've learned). We don't need a dozen birds doing that. Supposedly peacocks are rather secretive about their mating and nesting so we won't know for awhile if babies will result from all this showing off.

The chickens and turkeys are doing their best to liven up the view in the yard.

Chip in charge:

Calvin yearns for power:

Big Fat Daisy snags a strawberry:

Lars:

And what farm scene would be complete without sheep and goats and apple trees?

Springtime in Vermont.

It doesn't suck.

Fiber heaven, and some piggy pics

Saturday: Rainy, cool, gloomy. But there is goodness to share.

First, I updated the A Piece of Vermont with three colorways of Panda Superwash. Here we have Fern Lake:

May Day:

And River Rocks:

If I ever finish my April socks, my next pair will be in Panda Superwash. It's nice and shiny and makes a good warm-weather sock project, in my opinion. But what with the spring weather and the longer days, knitting has hit the back burner, I'm afraid.

Fiber, however, is right up front. I just put hand-blended batts up in the shop. These are primo fiber: 65 percent Tussah silk, 35 percent alpaca from Champlain Valley Alpacas right here in Vermont. I processed the raw alpaca here, dyed it and then blended it with the silk that I dyed separately. The way the colors end up totally floors me. Check it out.

This silk:

plus this alpaca:

Becomes these Champlain Sunset batts:

You can't see all the color variations that well, but they're in there. Here's the fiber still on the carder after the second pass:

And this silk:

And this alpaca:

becomes these Shore batts:

My friend Jenn was kind enough to spin up a tiny sample of the Champlain Sunset:

I Andean-plied her singles and made a very dumb (too wide, too short) swatch:

It doesn't do the fiber justice, but you can see a bit of the sheen from all the silk. So soft.

Anyway, I've put a bunch of batts (plus or minus 2 ounces each). Honestly, they're pricey. But the alpaca, being local, cost more than the silk, plus I processed it from raw fleece to fiber. But if you're a spinner looking for a unique and really luxurious fiber to spin, this might be the ticket. I'm still swooning from touching it all day yesterday.

And now, the moment you've all been waiting for: Piglets!

I didn't get such great shots, as the lighting is low and I had a backlighting situation going on. But I lightened these up a bit so you could see the growing babies. I have nothing to add to these, so just enjoy them and get on with your day.

I know why you're here

It's not for the knitting or the spinning. It's this:

I wish I had better pictures of these fast-growing little piggies but I haven't done very well with the camera. The above picture is a couple days old and these are even older (see how fat they're getting already?):

The thing is, these guys move like lightning and I have to use a slow shutter speed because there's not enough light in the barn. In lieu of adorable baby pig pictures, however, I did get some good ones of the older three. It was barn-cleaning day on Sunday and pigs absolutely love to burrow in fresh hay. Here, my brother in law is tossing forkfuls onto two of them. They run around and roll in it and snort and come for more when he stops.

There. Now that we've gotten that out of the way, there's more to report. Such as this on Sunday evening:

No, I don't mean the tractor, which saw a lot of use this weekend. And I don't mean the acre or so my husband tilled for my 30' x 40' garden (the man is a maniac on a John Deere). I mean that black dot way out beyond the pond. Here's a closer shot:

Yeah, that's a black bear. On our property. This was my first bear sighting, since last year I only heard the one that overturned furniture on our porch and bent our bird feeder pole. Maybe it's the same one.

I've got a bit of a shop update. There are four imperfect skeins of Crazy Love in Colonial Superwash:

That violet blotch appears once or twice in each skein. Still, at 20 percent off, maybe it's worth it to you. Four skeins could make a good-sized shawl...

I also put up some Blue-Faced Leicester in what I think are very cool colorways.

Suite: Judy Blue Eyes:

Peace Train (my favorite):

   

Scarborough Fair:

Long Ago and Far Away:

I spun up a tiny bit of this last one and got this. I Andean plied it and apparently the midpoint was in the middle of the black, so it knit up with a sort of gradient look, which was not actually what I was trying for. But it's neat. (And sooooo soft.)

Now, a couple of weeks ago, I spun up some merino/bamboo top. I finally figured out what to use it for: Katja from Knitty, for my nephew's new baby daughter. I'm not sure it's going to fit, as a lot of people on Ravelry said it was kind of wide and mine came out the same. But I'm hoping the colors are going to distract everyone:

I will be putting up more merino/bamboo top next week, and I am most certainly going to re-post these pictures, for advertising. This stuff is incredibly soft and silky.

I haven't blogged in a while because suddenly it's spring in Vermont and we've been doing a lot of outside work. It's been so refreshing (and exhausting) to be able to get outside and hang out with the animals.

The sheep and goats got a new electric fence and lots more pasture:

I have started brushing the goats with the horse slicker I use on the dog. They are becoming frighteningly addicted to getting a good grooming.

My friend Jenn, the newish knitter, just finished a Classy Slip-Up from the Knit Socks! book. I believe she used Plymouth Happy Feet yarn in a clever colorway such as 8. Or maybe 9. I forget.

I believe this is only her second pair of socks and she has quickly mastered the Kitchener stitch, although she has to have a paper bag to breathe into the whole time she's doing it. I was working in the shop (playing with my new toy, below) while she was grafting, and I think Sassy did less heavy breathing when she was giving birth to the piglets.

Look what I got:

It's not actually a Milo warning, although it could be:

It's actually my Pat Green Triple Picker, which makes short work of raw fleece to prep it for carding. That, or it's a medieval torture device.

I had some plans to offer some custom dyed Romney and other local fiber this week, but the Romney turned out to have too much VM for me to sell. On the bright side, I'm in the middle of blending up pure silk with Vermont alpaca, which is going to make batts so delicious I can't stand it. I'm carding the alpaca right now and it's so soft I feel like going to sleep while I'm carding. Just wait. More Panda Superwash is coming, too.

Well, I think I've gone on long enough here today. I've covered everything but the gratuitous cat photos. Here:

Piglets!!!

Last night around 8:00, Sassy went into labor. I haven't mentioned her pregnancy much because (a) we didn't keep track of when she actually was bred and didn't have a confirmed due date and (b) I wanted to be sure everything went well before sharing the news. Also, (c) Sassy has grown so unbelievably fat I didn't want to embarrass her:

Everything went well. Here's the first little piggy, unsuccessfully looking for a teat:

The midwives (my husband, daughter, and brother-in-law) looking on:

We weren't sure how much to interfere, but sometimes the gilt or sow can roll on or step on (or even rip apart!) the just-born piglets while she's delivering another one. So the boys moved the piglets out of her way each time she got up and moved around. They were surprisingly lively and wandered all over the pen shortly after being born.

My husband helping Sassy with her rhythmic breathing:

Fudd, the dad, paced nervously in the waiting room:

It took quite a long time between the first two piglets and the next two, but eventually there were four, in color-matched pairs:

Our older piggies seemed a bit curious about all the barn traffic that late at night:

And Fudd got up for a snack but went back to bed:

There was almost an hour where Sassy seemed to be having contractions but no piglets. I took more pictures of the first four but then had to bring my daughter (who was falling asleep seated on an upturned bucket in the pen) up to bed.